Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao: The morning after the fight before, the boxing party that wasn’t all it was meant to be

View from the sofa: Boxing on Radio 5 Live; Virtually Famous on Channel 4

The worst thing about a party is the morning after. Apart from the smell of stale beer, the crunch of various spilt snack foods underfoot, the sight of the bemused-looking pig standing in a pit that someone dug for it in the front room (true story), that empty feeling that the best night ever is now in the past lingers like the spewy smell of a piece of room-temperature pizza on a greasy plate.

It is even worse if the shindig didn’t even go off as it is supposed to. After all the build-up – canapé-buying, meticulous playlist assembling (no Mumford, and definitely no doom) and stashing of valuables – having what is supposed to be the bash to end all bashes fizzle like a damp firework makes you wish you could go back in time to when you were consumed by the crackle of anticipation. When disappointment wasn’t an option.

Like the middle of last week, when we saw Carl Froch standing on a roof garden in the blazing Las Vegas sunshine on Sky Sports News, in mirrored aviator sunglasses supping from a flute of Buck’s Fizz, surrounded by a buffet of swanky-looking satay sticks, talking of Floyd Mayweather v Manny Pacquiao, a fight that would be the world’s biggest, richest, greatest, most anticipated in the history of anything.

Then on fight night – or pre-dawn – on BBCRadio 5 Live (don’t judge, but some of us are too squeamish to watch two men attempt to batter each other into submission, no matter how much money is involved), the excellent commentator Mike Costello revved us up even more as superlative after superlative spilt from his mouth. Boy, did we feel lucky when he announced that “Clint Eastwood is here”. And when he revealed that “the queue to place bets is over 100 metres long” it was all we could do to refrain from hiring a private jet and winging it to Vegas.

It’s a good job we didn’t, because Steve Bunce, Costello’s cohort at the MGM Grand and The Independent’s boxing correspondent, revealed that the airport parking area for rich people’s jets “looks like Tesco’s on a Saturday afternoon”. As he divulged this, an American shouted in the background: “Scissors! Scissors! I beat ya!” Heck, it sounded as if, in addition to the biggest fight in history, we were also missing the most exciting game of rock, paper, scissors ever.

Now, a day or so after the fight (boxing, not rock, paper, scissors), we feel empty, if not a little cheated that the eventual bout failed to live up to the unattainable expectations. Mostly we feel dispirited. In anticipation’s place, there is a void, one that can only be filled by another massive sporting event.

Still, it could be worse. Your whole career could be a party, like the one of Jimmy Bullard, the former footballer. And then when the party is over, your whole life may seem like a morning after – one where you have to replace the thrill of sport with appearances on inane panel shows like Channel 4’s Virtually Famous.

Then you’d feel obliged to confess to the audience, in a desperate bidattempt to gain a laugh, that you once pissed in an aftershave bottle. Or that you “pooed in a bag and put it in a mate’s pillowcase”.

Poor Jimmy. At least for the rest of us, we can look forward to Sky Sports News’ next upcoming biggest-thing-ever. Get the canapés in and start digging the pig pit.